GOD LEVEL - Winners?

[Baracuda]

Is there any winner in god level (last one)?

Winning in emperor level is quite possible (very difficult if you don't succeed in following the other nations technology rythm... But quite possible)

But God level is awful and I can't follow them : It usually finish in 100 or 200 After Christ when you have built about 10 cities and have no possibilities to build more because you are in contact with the others civilizations and they finish you easily...

I come to this forum because french forums are full of level 1 or 2 and with scores reaching 1000 maximum... My best score is 9485 so it's difficult to have answers concerning my "emperor" problems...

[vmxa1]

Yes it has been beaten by quite a few players. CFC (civfanatics) has a HoF with the best score for a given set of conditions.

We have a few threads here at Poly were games are posted with wins here.

Basically you have to forget playing on pangea maps of std or larger size (IMO). I cannot say about tiny maps, but I would think it would need some special conditions.

[vmxa1]

Oh the level is called Sid. It is a reference to the creator of the Civ series.

Winning at Emperor is not hard with a decent start. We have many training threads and the AU to provide some solid play strategies.

Beyond emperor I would suggest that only Demi is soild and it requires attention to detail and no horrible start locations.

By solid I mean beatable my anyone that is willing to put in the effort to micromanage and has a solid idea of what the AI will do in most situations.

Deity needs a good start and every thing mentioned before, but you can lose in spite of it, if a KAI is encountered at the wrong time. Many things can go wrong, such as a xeno leader like Bismark being too close at the start and taking it in his head to kill you.

Sid requires better than a good start and some considerations of the settings. Again everything I said before applies.

Contients are very tricky, only island maps are reliable paths to victory at Sid. This is just my perspecive, nothing more.

[Theseus]

Baracuda, "KAI" is an acronym for a term that we use here at Apolyton: "Killer AI" civ.

BTW, vxma1 is being somewhat modest... he is one of the most regular winners of Sid-level games.

I think most experienced players (myself included) typically play and win in the Emperor to Demi-God range... there is in fact some discussion about possibly tweaking a mod we use often (the Apolyton University Mod) to zero in on the best playing environment we can.

Welcome aboard!!!

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Deity can be won by some outstanding players from almost any start (sure, things can always go wrong, like the nxt Civ simply deciding to use their gazzillions of starting units against you before you finish your first Warior...).
Sid, however, seems impossible without a decent start (usually at least a Cow and fresh water). And, only some of the Civs seem competitive here (mostly AGR or COM ones, or Civs with an outstanding UU like Persia or Vikings). And, I've not seen a Pangea victory yet.

[Dis]

why is pangea a no go?

I do better on those maps.

but of course I'm only playing Monarch. I've gotten better though. I'm finding my monarch games are no longer a challenge. Time to move up another level. Actually the only reason I kick ass on monarch now is because I'm attack all my neighbors and take their land. There just is no other way for me to win. I can't allow the AI to get larger than me.

But how do you prevent the AI from raping you in the higher levels? surely they have more units than you. They tend to want to gang up on you. Although I have had one game I was so far behind no one paid attention to me. But then I was behind in tech and lost the space ship race.

[punkbass2000]

The AI just has too many units to play on a Pangaea with. If you start with any more than two AI near you (and connected by land), it's pretty well game over from the get-go, IMO. Otherwise you just get crushed. Not only do they tend to decalre war because they have a million freakin units running around which are technologically superior (making them much stronger than you) they will all sigh into MAs against you quickly; I find you'll be lucky to have enough money to spare to get even one AI on your side. Even starting with two AI on your home continent is rough, one or zero is generally ideal. The top two valid entries on the HoF at CFC were done on Huge Archipelago maps with 8 opponents. IIRC MoonSinger started on her own continent, and SirPleb was probably at least 40 tiles from his nearest opponents start, on a large Peninsula far W on the largest continent, which held three AI who were all relatively close.

[vmxa1]

Not only do you have the problem of the AI coming after with all the units it has, but they will have contacts much too soon. This will lead to increased research rates which will be bad for you.

Contients are rough as well for much the same reason, but it is not quite as bad and I have won a few times, but mostly will lose. You have the chance they will war before you are able to defend and you have the bigger chance that one civ taking down the others on their contient.

This has caused me to lose games because no AI was able to keep the KAI in check culturally. I either take over my contient or I die. If I do take it over, it comes down to me and the KAI and maybe a straggler.

I rely on the other civs to kep the culture race with in the double level, until I can get there myself.

If you want to see how fast a sid level ai on pangea maps will expand, turn on debug. It is very depressing. One or two will have 5 cities up before you even start a settler. You can sometimes see 5 cities building another settler at that point.

Waves of warriors fan out to hunt down barbs and greet each other. Mean time you have to avoid barbs as they are likely to kill your warrior. You no longer have any bonus vs barbs and it seems to be like fighting vet spears.

This is why I like MW's as they have a good chance to kill barbs. This is another problem in pangea maps. You will have to use that ancient UU right away and trigger a GA. Not to mention starting with Pottery and Alpha is a very good thing.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by punkbass2000
The The top two valid entries on the HoF at CFC were done on Huge Archipelago maps with 8 opponents. IIRC MoonSinger started on her own continent, and SirPleb was probably at least 40 tiles from his nearest opponents start, on a large Peninsula far W on the largest continent, which held three AI who were all relatively close.

Those were something to follow. I now use 10 players, but I am not sure how much a difference more would make. IOW I do not know what the max one could handle is, I just do not want the extra work. Of course the fewer the longer the contact will tend to be and the more expensive techs will be.

But the biggest thing is that it is about 1000 less units per civ to be moving around. Once in a while I like to do a conquest, so that would be a ton of extra battles.

[Dis]

where can I see those games? Are there save games?

In what method did they win?

[punkbass2000]

Moonsinger's 80k game and Sir Pleb's 60k game. IIRC, SirPleb's was the first HoF entry for Sid (at least, the first really good one in the score category) and MoonSinger's is by far the highest score I've ever heard of. If you go to the HoF, BTW, you will see another score in 2nd ~75k, but it is going to be removed shortly for violations (someone just noticed it was played without the domination condition, thus allowing an inflated score). Anyway, both of these threads are very long, but there's a lot of very good stuuf in each. For the purposes of this thread, the initial meanderings on world, civ and climate choices are probably most poignant.

[Remulak]

Hi Barracuda:

I have been playing CIV III Conquests for some time and have been able to win consistently at Emperor. In order to win at Deity, you need to spend a lot of time micromanaging which drives me crazy and takes a lot of time.

Good luck

[gunkulator]

Here's another vote for Emperor. I also find the levels above that to be too filled with tedious, endless micromanagement of tiny, close packed cities - so much for building a grand civilization.

I can usually beat Emperor, however if I get lousy terrain or an aggressive close by neighbor, I still sometimes lose. The good thing about losing, though, is that you usually learn something new to try the next time. For example, I had never tried an early archer rush or picked off any AI warrior/settler teams until I got hemmed in by a too close neighbor. That game was over pretty quickly. The next time I met an early warrior settler team, I traded for Warrior Code, built some archers, and took them out.